


Love Before Duty

by thewolvescalledmehome



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, F/M, Post-Canon, because canon's shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 21:08:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18902686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewolvescalledmehome/pseuds/thewolvescalledmehome
Summary: The epilogue we should have gotten.





	Love Before Duty

Jon sat with his back to the fire, grateful for the darkness that hid the reminder of where he was. Of what color his cloak was.

It had been months and the only reminders he had that this wasn’t all a dream were his scars and his memories. His nightmares reminded him too, but those had started to fade the farther he traveled north. He wondered if they would leave him all together if he went as far north as the land allowed.

“Still can’t face it?” Tormund asked, sitting beside him. Jon turned enough to see the flicker of flame dance on his friend’s face. He shook his head.

“No. I still see the city burning.”

“South might be a better place for you then. No fires needed in the South.”

Jon closed his eyes, remembering feeling the sun and the warmth, the steady heat that was so different from a burning, cackling fire. He almost relaxed with the thought, but then he remembered how the sun glinted off the golden shields of the Lannister soldiers.

“I can’t go back down there. It would be worse to be back in the city.” Jon heard Tormund’s sigh.

“In Winterfell?”

“Winterfell isn’t south.”

“You keep saying that. It’s south of here, aye?”

Jon rolled his eyes, but his lips twitched in something that resembled a smile.

“I can’t go back. I’d be a deserter.”

“What happens to deserters?”

“Execution,” Jon answered, remembering how he watched Ned Stark, the man he had spent years believing was his father, swing Ice to sever a man’s head from the black cloak he wore.

“You broke your vows before.”

Jon winced at the statement.

“Only so that you all would believe I was one of you.” Tormund guffawed, clapping him on the back hard enough that he nearly fell in the snow.

“You might have a bit of the true north in you, but you were never one of us.”

The comment slid through him like ice. He had volunteered to help Tormund take the free folk home because he thought he would make a home for himself amongst them. The way Ygritte had once talked about. He supposed he should have known better. He didn’t belong with them, the same way he hadn’t belonged in the South or in Winterfell.

“You’ve never been a crow, Jon Snow. You’ve always been a wolf.”

Sansa’s voice echoed in his head: _You are a Stark. You are to me._ He lost his breath at the mere memory of her voice and the softness that came with it.

 _No,_ he chided. _I will take no wife and father no children._

“Your queen would pardon you if you asked, I’m sure.”

“M-my queen?” Jon repeated. His heart stuttered in his chest. _No, no, she’s dead. I stuck a knife through her heart. And she was never my queen._

“Sansa. She’s the Queen in the North, aye?”

Jon chuckled, raking his hand through his hair.

“She won’t help me after I nearly lost the North.”

“She would.”

Jon shook his head. He willed Tormund to leave it alone. He didn’t need reminders of what he could have had. What he nearly had. If only he had been able to put love before duty.

“Go home, Jon Snow. Go home to your family.”

* * *

Sansa turned at the sound of footsteps approaching. She had heard the gates open earlier. After all these months, she still couldn’t fight the thrill of excitement—of hope—that rushed through her every time she received word of someone arriving in Winterfell.

“Your Grace,” Lord Royce said, bowing. Sansa had yet to become used to people bowing to her. To being queen. “Your men have captured a deserter. How would you like him to be dealt with?”

“A deserter?” Hope flared bright and warm in her chest.

“It is your brother, Your Grace. Jon Snow.”

Sansa’s first thought was _cousin, not brother._ Her second was _he came back for me._

“Bring him to me,” she commanded. Her voice was higher than usual. She hoped it would escape Lord Royce’s notice.

“At once, Your Grace.”

Before she had heard the footsteps, Sansa had been reading through their inventory but she could hardly return to that now. Not when she knew she would be seeing a member of her family for the first time since she returned north.

Not when she would be faced with the only man she ever truly loved.

She paced the length of the table. How would he look? She hoped better than he did when they left King’s Landing. Seeing him that way had nearly broken her heart. Saying goodbye to him had.

Sansa was distracted enough by her own thoughts that she startled when the door opened again.

“The deserter, Your Grace.”

Lord Royce escorted Jon to the middle of the hall, to the place both Jaime Lannister and Littlefinger had once stood. She couldn’t bear to see him in the very same position both had been in. Neither of the other two men had fared well after standing there.

“Thank you, Lord Royce. You may leave us.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Sansa waited until Lord Royce had left the hall before she looked at Jon.

Despite the years and the wars, Sansa thought he looked younger—more the boy that had left for the Wall when she had left for the capitol and less the man who had saved the continent from a tyrant.

He wore the black cloak she recognized from when she arrived at Castle Black. It looked wrong on him, she thought. Black didn’t suit him the same way Stark grey did. She preferred him in the cloak she had made.

“Your Grace,” he said, voice little more than a rasp. She noticed how his grey eyes were fixed on his feet.

Jon started to kneel but Sansa caught him by his arm before he could. She pulled him into a hug instead. She wrapped her arms around him, her cheek against his chilled skin. He smelled of winter, of the North, of her home. She felt how his body stiffened before he clutched her to his chest. She lost her breath with how tightly he held her, but she felt like it was the first time she had exhaled since she was named Queen.

Sansa blinked back tears as she stepped away.

“Lord Royce called you a deserter? Have you broken your vows and abandoned the Watch?” _Please say yes,_ she thought.

“I’ve come to seek a pardon. I… I don’t deserve a life sentence. I broke no laws. I have harmed no innocents. I saved the realm from a woman who would have seen it burned to ash.”

Sansa had been ready to grant the pardon the moment she heard the sentence. She never had any intention of letting him live out the remainder of his life in exile. The mention of the reason for his exile gave her pause. The reminder of the dragon queen made her stomach churn. The woman who had nearly stolen everything from her.

“Why did you do it?”

“To protect the realm.”

“No, not kill her. Why did you bend the knee?”

“To protect the North. To protec—” Jon choked off halfway through, a strangled sound coming out instead.

“If it was just for the North, just for the battle against the dead, then why did you lead our armies south? Why did you help her take the capitol?”

“To protect you. She was threatened by you. Every time it seemed that I was siding with you, she would threaten you. I had to do it. I couldn’t bear the thought—”

Sansa felt a flutter in her stomach that she hadn’t been expecting. She knew she had loved him, but she had never guessed that she was anything other than his obnoxious half-sister, or cousin.

“Did you love her?” she bit out, needing to know the answer.

Jon met her eyes for the first time then. The brokenness in them fractured her.

“No, I never loved her. I wanted to, at first. I desperately wanted to love her until I met her. Until I learned the truth of what she was.”

The first half of the answer nearly brought a smile to her lips but the second half had her mouth filling with bile.

“You _wanted_ to love her?”

“I wanted to not feel that way about you! I thought that maybe if I met the beautiful dragon queen, I would no longer have dreams about my half-sister. I thought if I loved her, I would no longer love you.”

Jon was shouting, and she was sure some lords would overhear, but she didn’t care. He loved her. He said he loved her. He never loved the dragon queen.

“There, you have the truth of it, so either send me back to the Wall or execute me for what I’ve done, but I don’t regret it. I did what I needed to in order to save the realm.”

He stood tall then, jaw stuck out in the way she had seen Arya do often. It was the first she had seen him look truly like himself since he left for the South.

Sansa turned her back on him, turning for her desk. In the bottom of one of her stacks of scrolls and parchments was the first decree she had written after her coronation. Her first act as Queen in the North.

“I, Sansa Stark, Queen in the North, officially grant you, Jon Snow, a royal pardon, freeing you of your service as a member of the Night’s Watch. You are free to hold land, take a wife, and father sons,” she recited, passing the parchment to him. The silver of the Direwolf seal glinted like his eyes in the candlelight.

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

“Where will you go?” she asked, praying to the old gods that he would say nowhere. He would stay in Winterfell. Stay where he belonged.

“I don’t know yet. Somewhere I’m wanted, I supposed.”

Sansa heard the devastation in his voice. He still didn’t believe that he was a Stark, and that Starks belonged in Winterfell.

“You’re wanted here, Jon. I will always want you here.” She reached for his hand and though he initially flinched away, he squeezed hers back tightly.

“Even after what I just told you? You’d want me to stay?”

 _I love you,_ she nearly said. _I have loved you since you gave me my home back._

“This is your home, Jon. This is where you belong,” is what she said. What she meant was: _I am your home. I am where you belong._

“I doubt Royce and the other lords will like having me around. I am a queenslayer after all.”

“Royce and the other lords can eat shit,” she stated, still holding fast to his hand. “I am Queen after all.”

She saw a faint spark in his eye then, a curve to his lips.

Sansa felt the war-roughened skin of his hand against hers and it sent her blood thrumming through her. _These are the hands of a hero,_ she thought.

“All right. I’ll stay. If you truly want me.”

His hand began to slip from hers and she knew she was losing her chance at happiness, at love. At the one thing she wanted but didn’t yet have.

Sansa caught his hand again, tugging him closer.

“Sansa.” She heard the strain in his voice, saw the anguish in the way his eyes danced between hers and their hands. He still loved her. She still had a chance.

“I love you, Jon,” she murmured before pressing her lips against his.

It was the first time that she ever kissed a man, that she was the one to lean in and be in control.

She felt Jon’s chest shudder against hers as he wound his arms tight around her waist.

She hoped he never let her go.


End file.
